INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

'Technorealists' Hope to Enrich Debate
Over Policy Issues in Cyberspace

When some people debate the role of technology in society, they can become downright unreasonable.

Too often, observers say, the discussions become a war between the two most vocal camps: On one side are techno-utopians who see cyberspace as a new, idyllic frontier where government is unnecessary and prejudices can be overcome. On the other side are the neo-Luddites, who fear that technology threatens to break apart communities and unravel the fabric of our values.

Now a group of 12 technology-savvy writers and commentators wants to end the war -- or at least negotiate a truce -- by recasting the public debate about technology policy. They call themselves "technorealists," and they've released a set of principles that describe technology as bringing both novel benefits and unexpected hazards. Technology should be embraced, they say, but with care and skepticism. Their principles are so simple that some have called them common sense and others have dismissed them as naïve.

On Thursday, the technorealists presented and defended their ideas at Harvard Law School here. Three law professors probed and prodded the founders of the new movement in front of an audience of students, researchers, and others.

The stakes are high for making better decisions about technology, said David S. Bennahum, who is editor of an on-line newsletter called MEME and a contributor to a number of technology magazines. He said technorealists hope to help society maintain control of technology by fostering careful policy decisions.

"Believe me," he said, "there are a lot of people out there who believe that we should get the hell out of the way, and that there are forces out there -- nature or the market or whatever -- that are a damn lot better than human beings as far as making these choices."

"We're just trying to inject a more-critical perspective into the debate about how new technologies are affecting our lives," said Andrew Shapiro, a technorealist who is a fellow at the law school's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. "If there is one word that summarizes all of this, it's 'balance.'"

The technorealist statement of principles covers a range of issues, including copyright ("Information wants to be protected"), education ("Wiring the schools will not save them"), and control of the airwaves ("We should demand more for private use of public property").

Perhaps the technorealists' most controversial point is that the government has a legitimate interest in setting rules for computer networks. That idea angers some activists -- including a number of influential and veteran users of the Internet -- who have argued that cyberspace should be used as an experiment in laissez-faire social policy. "Cyberspace is not formally a place or jurisdiction separate from earth," say the technorealists. "It is foolish to say that the public has no sovereignty over what an errant citizen or fraudulent corporation does on line."

But most of the manifesto seeks to enrich the debate, rather than to take sides on specific policies. Because the Internet and other computerized innovations are so new and complex, the technorealists say, it is easy for discussion about them to become clouded by fear and misinformation.

For instance, widespread characterizations of cyberspace as an electronic red-light district led to the passage of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that sponsors said was meant to protect children from stumbling onto pornography in cyberspace. The law made it a crime to post "indecent" material on line where minors might see it. The Supreme Court struck down the measure last year as an unconstitutional restriction of speech, ruling that its provisions covered too broad a range of materials, including literature and art dealing with sexual topics.

At the other extreme, the technorealists say, the Clinton Administration has touted wiring the nation's public schools as a panacea for problems in education. But spending money on computers without making other reforms is misguided, the technorealists argue.

Larry Lessig, a law professor at Harvard who served as one of the moderators at the event, said that some of technorealism's goals recalled legal realism, an American political movement in the early 1900s that encouraged more critical thinking about regulating economic markets. But he said that other points in the technorealists' manifesto sounded more like "hype." Mr. Lessig has become an Internet celebrity for having been appointed and then dismissed as a "special master" to review material for the federal judge who is hearing the Justice Department's antitrust case against Microsoft.

The idea of technorealism grew informally during the last few months -- over lunchtime conversations and e-mail messages -- among a group of friends who decided that they needed to coin a new term to describe their beliefs.

"Language matters," said David Shenk, a technology writer who is a commentator for National Public Radio. "There isn't a word for someone who is very enthusiastic about technology but is also very concerned about aspects of technology." Mr. Shenk's latest book, Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut, talks about both the wonders of the information highway and the dangers of information overload.

The technorealists represent a "silent majority" of people whose beliefs align them with neither the techno-utopians nor the neo-Luddites, said Brooke Shelby Biggs, a technology columnist based in San Francisco. "We're saying, 'You're not alone out there if you don't belong in either camp.'"

But John Perry Barlow, a well-known proponent of technology who was in the audience, took issue with how the technorealists "cartooned" his beliefs as techno-utopian -- in order, he said, to make their point.

Discussion of technorealism continues on an on-line forum sponsored by Feed magazine, and the manifesto's creators invite anyone on the Internet to sign their statement of principles.